Tag: astroturf

As anyone but a but Fox viewing Republican knows climate change is real and happening now and not 100 years from now.  While not widely reported by the American media in the last 4 years the Koch brothers and the associated groups they fund have been forced into the light of day by those willing to investigate the agenda these funds support.

The Donors Trust, along with its sister group Donors Capital Fund, based in Alexandria, Virginia, is funnelling millions of dollars into the effort to cast doubt on climate change without revealing the identities of its wealthy backers or that they have links to the fossil fuel industry.

Remember “Climategate”? Think Charles and David Koch

The Knowledge and Progress Fund, whose directors include Charles Koch and his wife Liz, gave $1.25m to Donors in 2007, a further $1.25m in 2008 and $2m in 2010. It does not appear to have given money to any other group and there is no mention of the fund on the websites of Koch Industries or the Charles Koch Foundation.

The Donors Trust is a “donor advised fund”, meaning that it has special status under the US tax system. People who give money receive generous tax relief and can retain greater anonymity than if they had used their own charitable foundations because, technically, they do not control how Donors spends the cash.

Anonymous private funding of global warming sceptics, who have criticised climate scientists for their lack of transparency, is becoming increasingly common. The Kochs, for instance, have overtaken the corporate funding of climate denialism by oil companies such as ExxonMobil. One such organisation, Americans for Prosperity, which was established by David Koch, claimed that the “Climategate” emails illegally hacked from the University of East Anglia in 2009 proved that global warming was the “biggest hoax the world has ever seen”.

Global warming is the biggest hoax of all that’s why its taking place in our lifetime and not in 10,000 years as these fools would have you believe.

Justin Elliott writes at TPM Muckraker Wednesday April 21, 2010:

Rent-A-Front: New Group Wages Stealth Battle Against Wall Street Reform

In the last few weeks, a new player entered the financial reform fray with a $1.6 million ad buy, a respected economist on board, a blitz of opinion columns on left-leaning websites, and a message, cooked right into the group’s name — Stop Too Big To Fail — that liberals could love.

But as TPMmuckraker has looked into the group, every indication is that Stop Too Big To Fail is an astroturf operation funded by corporate interests to give the appearance of grassroots opposition to reform.

The group’s leader has a long history running a rent-a-front operation: offering up his services to large corporations who are willing to pay top dollar for a “consumers group” that will engage in stealth advocacy on behalf of industry. The group refuses to divulge its funding sources. The respected economist whose support the group touts now says he was deceived. And Stop Too Big To Fail has links to DCI Group, one of Washington’s best-known astroturf operators.

Besides all that, Stop Too Big To Fail’s real goal is clear: kill the financial reform bill.

The title says it all.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

At least half a dozen leaders of the Republican Party have joined forces to create a new political group with the goal of organizing grass-roots support and raising funds ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to people familiar with the effort.

The organizational details of the group, expected to be called the American Action Network, are still being worked out, but it is expected to contain both a 501(c)3 and a 501(c)4 component. In simpler terms, a 501(c)3 can advocate on policy matters while a 501(c)4 is an election arm.

Republican leaders expected to be affiliated with the group include former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Bush adviser Karl Rove, Republican strategist Ed Gillespie, and Republican donor Fred Malek.

wsj.com

    Jeb Bush, George Bush, same difference, same incompetent governing style, failed ideas and Corporatist agenda.

    More below the fold

Oh, the charm of the fossil fuels industry. In an effort to prevent public awareness of the growing climate crisis they do so much to create, they concocted an astroturf front with the Orwellian moniker Global Climate Coalition. The purpose of which was, of course, to deny its industry’s role in creating climate change. Thereby exacerbating the problem of climate change. Which does, actually, make it a coalition on global climate. A coalition determined to recklessly play a giant chemistry experiment with the climate, as long as its industry can make massive profits off it.

According to today’s New York Times:

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue

And it should come as no surprise, then, to learn that this astroturf front was so determined to deny its industry’s role in causing climate change that it actually engaged its own scientists. Who engaged in acts of science. And determined that, um, well, the fossil fuels industry does actually contribute to climate change. Oops.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

Sadly, every time that we fill up our gas tank, flip the switch for fossil-foolish electricity, warm ourselves with (high efficiency?) natural gas, we risk sending funding to people dedicated to destroying the potential for fostering paths toward mitigation of global warming and our other serious challenges.  Fractions of pennies add up to serious money, serious funding for those evidently uncaring as to the havoc that they are fostering for their own children — let alone yours and mine.

From the West, we have the fumes of a particularly egregious group of astroturfers. Let’s talk a little  about the Western Business Roundtable.